


Rose Red

by sibley (ferns)



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Self-Reflection, is this a character study? maybe!, rita is not explicitly a lesbian but she Is One.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 10:23:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18247916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: Rita's favorite color is red. It always has been.





	Rose Red

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a simple man I think about everything Rita has been through and I just start screaming.
> 
> [ **CW:** this work deals heavily with the aftermath of abusive/controlling relationships, has references to past sexual assault and suicide, and contains mentions of people believing they need to initiate sexual encounters in order to repay others for kindness/respect/decency.]

Rita’s favorite color is red. It always has been.

Everyone always said she looked beautiful in red. Red dresses, red shoes, red makeup. They said it was such a shame that the cameras couldn’t pick up exactly how stunning she looked. That there was always something a little  _ off  _ in all the pictures. The colors just weren’t as vibrant as they should’ve been. Everything hued yellow, when it wasn’t black and white.

It’s not just the colors that are wrong, of course. That’s not the only thing that almost-but-not-quite ruins every picture. But nobody ever looks at her eyes. Eyes have never been the most beautiful part of a person. They just add character. Rita’s never been very good at acting with her eyes. It’s a good thing nobody looks too closely, isn’t it?

(Steve said she had beautiful eyes, and that the color red brought them out better than anything else did, that no wonder she wore it all the time if she looked so good in it.)

Larry’s favorite color is green, not red. He’d acted like nobody had ever asked him that before when Rita had. He hadn’t looked at her when he’d answered, though it was admittedly hard to tell with him, pulling his jacket closer. He’d been shaking a bit.

Cliff doesn’t have a favorite color, apparently. It’s ridiculous.  _ Everyone  _ has a favorite color. Except him, apparently, because it’s not manly enough to have a favorite color, or something. Somehow he makes it about his daughter, which is very sweet of him, but  _ not  _ the reason why she asked him.

Jane’s favorite color is dark blue. Hammerhead’s is red, and Baby Doll and Flit’s favorite color is pale pink, and the Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter likes purple. Black Annis doesn’t have a favorite color either, but Rita’s pretty sure it’s black. Driver 8 likes grey, and Scarlet likes hot pink, and Sun Daddy likes orange. Predictably, Silvertongue likes silver. Mama Pentecost likes black. Then Flit leaves, so Rita doesn’t get to hear the rest of the list.

Victor’s favorite color is dark blue, too. He said it reminded him of the color of his mom’s car. He’s a good kid. Rita thinks it’s nice to hear him talk about his mom. Much more interesting than listening to Cliff talk about his daughter.

(She never bothered to ask Niles.)

Rita doesn’t know why she cares so much. It’s not like it  _ matters,  _ not really. It’s not important. It wasn’t important before Niles disappeared, and it’s not important after. It just makes her feel better to know certainties about people, or something. Certainties like favorite colors and least favorite foods and favorite movies (as long as they’re hers).

When she takes down her pictures, she can’t bring herself to get rid of them. Instead, she just looks at them, spread out on her bed. She knows she was wearing red in almost all of them. Red or white. Those are the best colors, after all.

(She’d let Marybeth borrow her best red lipstick, once. The third time she asked. She’d said she wanted to look good for her interview. She’d thanked Rita over and over again, saying that she didn’t know what she would do without her, that she was so happy she’d given her a chance to talk to someone so  _ influential  _ in Hollywood.)

She had been wearing white, the first time. It had hurt. Her skin felt like it was tearing off. She had been lucky they hadn’t filmed her breakdown on the side of the main road of the town they were filming outside of, Kikwit, after she’d fled from the set. People had been staring and pointing and it had been horrible. It had hurt so bad. Her skin hadn’t torn, though. No fresh red on white.

It had hurt, the second time. And the third time, and the fourth time, and the fifth time. After awhile it was hard to tell if it actually hurt physically, or if her brain was just all twisted up inside. After she learned the breathing exercises, it got easier. Everything got a lot easier. She owed Steve for that. She owed him so much. Of course she had to pay him back, didn’t she?

Rita had never tried to pay  _ Niles  _ back for rescuing her. For coaching her through her first nervous breakdowns and believing that she could get better one day. Not the way she would’ve before. She just tidied up after herself when she moved in and wondered privately to herself if he’d ever ask her to come to his office and close the door, and by the tenth year she’d realized that it wasn’t going to happen at all.

Larry was a different story. But it had only been once, and he’d fallen off the couch while refusing, and after that she had noticed some things about when he paid attention during her movies, and she hadn’t tried again. Larry was much better as a friend, anyway. He was her best and only friend, because Niles wasn’t even really a friend. He was more like an eternal groundskeeper than anything, one that occasionally brought home strays.

But Steve was before Larry. Steve was before almost everything. He taught her how to be herself again. He taught her how to live again, even if living just meant watching repeats of her own performances endlessly when she wasn’t roaming the empty mansion or trying to work up the courage to go back home and try to get another job, even after what happened the last time.

Steve had been good. Better than she deserved at times, even when he didn’t tell her where he was going or exactly how far he’d pushed into her head, even when he sometimes squeezed just a little bit too tightly. The years had changed him. He’d been… Good to her, once. He’d helped her, when he hadn’t needed to, and she’d owed him for that, and then when he’d gone away she’d been sad, and that was how it always went because that was her place. That was her role.

She’d only met the friends he went off with once, when they came to get him and Niles for something that they never properly explained to her. Well, she met  _ one  _ of them. Arani. Rita hadn’t known her name until Josh introduced them years later, but she had been nice. Beautiful, too. Hypnotizingly beautiful. It was a wonder Steve hadn’t noticed her, but maybe he had, because it hadn’t been long after that when he-

Rita maintains that he had no right to go poking around in her mind without asking beforehand. That he had no right to use those things against her. He didn’t _ understand  _ how she’d thought of Marybeth, how it was so much more her fault that he could ever know, or what it had been like when she’d-how she’d felt when-he had  _ no right  _ to blame her for any of it. Did he?

(She’s already done it enough for the both of them, anyway, but there was no point in saying that. She wasn’t sure if he would have believed her if she had.)

She wonders what Steve would think of her now. She doesn’t want to think about him as that old man in the basement, but if she’s truly being honest with herself she doesn’t want to think of him as the same arrogant young man he had been when they first met, either. But she wonders what he would think if he told her that she’d used her powers without pain, mental or physical, once. Just once, so far. But she’d done it. For a near stranger, no less. Not even for herself. Like he’d always said she’d be able to. Hell, what would  _ Niles  _ think of it when she got the chance to tell him? Would he be proud of her?

Too many people she knew wanted to end it all for themselves for her liking. It hadn’t taken much to pull Elliot back, and he probably would’ve been okay if he’d fallen or jumped, but it had still been scary. He didn’t deserve to die. He didn’t deserve to be punished for something that had never, ever been his fault. Something that had been forced on him by other people who didn’t give him any other option. Protecting him from Kipling had been as easy as breathing. Almost too easy.

Steve always said it would be easy one day. That maybe she would lose her form in her sleep, but that was all. That she’d be able to control it perfectly one day, with his help. She’d never be able to do it without him, of course, but that was to be expected. She was fragile, and he knew what was best for her, and he knew exactly what she wanted without her even having to ask, and-

(He always seemed to know without her having to ask. Three steps ahead of her, a finger on a pulse point she didn’t even know she had.)

Rita looks at the pictures again.

She used to need them. Those pictures of her in beautiful red outfits, eyes just a little too blank. She’d studied them endlessly. She’d needed help reforming herself. Making herself look  _ right,  _ not like an imitation of an imitation of an-on and on and on. She’d convinced herself that she still needed them to help her get everything exactly  _ right.  _ To look the way it had before with none of the memories.

Even now, she can feel herself slipping. Can feel the  _ certainty  _ that this isn’t a good idea. That getting rid of these pictures is the same as getting rid of herself, because they’re all she has left. It’s not like she won’t have her movie posters still up. It’s not like-it’s not like she’s getting rid of every part of herself. Is it? These pictures  _ aren’t  _ all Rita has left of who she really is. Are they?

Her fingers start to soften, the familiar dull ache of her cheeks sliding downward making her legs shake. Her lipstick is smudging. She didn’t have time to wipe it off. Fuzzily, like she’s watching it happen through a dream, she tries to use the back of her hand to do it, but it just smears red onto her skin. Red. Fuck.

(Her mother always told her that ladies shouldn’t curse. Rita rarely did. Well, she didn’t  _ used  _ to, but lately things had gone so far to hell that it felt only natural to react in kind. Even if it was unladylike.)

Red. Fuck. Red like her lipstick, red like her clothes, red like her own blood, red like Marybeth’s blood. Goddammit. Little red lines. She’s  _ trying,  _ but everything is coming apart at the seams and she won’t let it. She  _ won’t  _ let it. She’s  _ Rita Farr,  _ star of the screen, and Rita Farr doesn’t have nervous breakdowns and flee from movie sets and Rita Farr doesn’t let anyone tell her what to do and Rita Farr doesn’t literally melt when she’s stressed out or overstimulated, even if she would deserve it if all those bad things  _ did  _ happen to her.

Maybe that’s part of the problem. She’s not Rita Farr anymore, is she? Rita Farr belongs to other people, not to her. Rita Farr belongs to men who can do whatever they want without consequences. Rita Farr belongs to producers and directors and executives and to Steve Dayton. Rita Farr belongs in Hollywood. She couldn’t have made it after becoming a freak. She’s not Rita Farr. She’s just Rita. Rita in red.

Rita thinks she might be crying.

She tries to stifle the sound and can’t. Literal body shaking sobs. She tries to touch one of her pictures and can’t, everything blurring too much around her own edges. She can’t control it. She can’t control herself. She tries to do her breathing exercises, but that just makes her think about Steve even more, and that’s the  _ last  _ thing she needs.

(Even before the accident, sometimes Rita had felt like there was something wrong in her veins. It had felt like everyone could see it when they looked at her. Everyone could tell she was trying to hide a part of herself, everyone could tell that she wasn’t as perfect as she tried to be, and everyone was silently judging her for it. Worse than that, though, was the feeling-the  _ knowledge- _ that she deserved it.)

She tries to think about something else, anything else, instead. No actors and actresses she had once known, so De Mille was off the table, not that Rita thought about her often or anything. Of course not. No movies she’d been in, either, but that and breathing the way Steve had showed her were really the only things she  _ could  _ think about. That’s what had worked before. Pretending she had an audience watching and reminding herself that she was still herself. That was  _ all  _ that had worked before.

Somehow, Rita starts thinking about Larry. She doesn’t know why or how but she latches onto him anyway because he’s the first thing that’s popped into her mind that hasn’t made her want to tear her own skin off. Larry is calming, even when he’s a nervous wreck. Larry is green, because that’s his favorite color, and even when he’s rude to her he’s still her friend and she’s still his.

So she’ll think about Larry. About the first time he actually let her hug him without falling over himself. About the first time she  _ properly  _ met the  _ thing  _ that lives inside him, when it found her in the kitchen trying to get some supplies for what she could tell would be a bad night and watched her (could it even see her?) for a moment before grabbing an armful of crackers and leaving with a static sound.

Larry’s her friend. Larry’s good. He’s trustworthy. Sometimes he’s not always there for her and sometimes he can be a little dense and sometimes he believes blue horse heads with railroad spikes in their skulls and sometimes he gets lost in his own head, but he’s still her friend and he’s still trustworthy.

(Larry’s the only one who knows. Not all of it, she can’t bring herself to talk about all of it, but Larry knows how hard it could be to get steady roles sometimes, how difficult it was after her last half movie, and Larry knows that sometimes when things get out of control all you can do is try to take it back in any way you possibly can.)

When Rita opens her eyes, her body is just a little firmer. It takes some more rearranging to get it just the way she wants it. A little less reshaping than usual, though. And when she pushes something, it stays the first time instead of sagging again immediately. She did that all on her own. Rita looks at the smudge of makeup that’s still on her hand. It doesn’t look as much like blood as she’d thought it did on first glance. It’s just a smear of red lipstick. Nothing more. Nothing worse.

The pictures of herself, all those beautiful pictures of her standing in red and smiling with nothing behind her eyes, are still laid out on her bed.

Rita doesn’t look at them again as she gets rid of them.

**Author's Note:**

> A few more notes: a) the Negative Spirit getting snacks for Larry in the middle of the night is a real thing from the Silver Age, by the way, and yes, it is as fantastic as it sounds, b) if you think Rita and Larry aren't best friends get out of my face because they absolutely are, and c) Rita using pictures of herself to literally rebuild herself from scratch every day is a real thing from Giffen's run and to be honest I really liked the idea.
> 
> I'm augustheart on tumblr and I bully Mento daily because he is a rat and I hate him.


End file.
